 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-06-18 16:01
I hear Albert from Belgium also made Boehm clarinets. What are they like? Is there anything special about them? The Albert system Albert clarinets, we associate with the woody New Orleans clarinet tone.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: jim sclater
Date: 2019-06-18 17:26
There is a set of Jacques Albert boehm clarinets on sale now from Clarinets Direct in the UK. The description of these clarinets may give you some of the information you seek.
JS
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Author: donald
Date: 2019-06-19 00:53
Alan Hacker used to play these I believe (possibly also Tony Pay, recalling an old interview). Didn't John Denman also play on a customised pair of these before going over to Yamaha?
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-06-19 18:17
Donald: Tony Coe has played everything! -he is incredibly curious. I know his father played Albert Bohm. I also knew John Denman, but he was playing Yamaha at the time. I would have thought he played BH 1010s before that. I wonder what the bore specifications on the instruments were. I hope to try one out as soon as I can get my hands on one.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-06-19 20:19
Donald: I've just spoken to Tony Coe, who confirmed that he did play Albert boehm for a while, as did Alan Hacker. So you are absolutely right. The only thing is that he says they were nothing extraordinary. He prefers Dolnet, a French clarinet from pretty much the same period. According to Tony, they had rather a German sound and probably had a rather cylindrical bore; only flaring out at the bottom.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: donald
Date: 2019-06-20 23:38
I was actually referring to Tony Pay - there was a book "the orchestra" that came out in the 1970s and included interviews with Hacker, Pay and I recall some players from USA (Tony Haddcock?). In it the Albert clarinets are mentioned and I thought BOTH Pay and Hacker played them at one point... or at least admired them.
I played Alan Hackers clarinets in 1989 or 1990 (maybe 91?) and had some lessons from him, but couldn't comment on the instruments as I was just a student then and only played them briefly.
I'd be 90% sure that Denman played them- in the early 1980s he had a regular slot writing for the Clarinet, and there was also an earlier interview with him. His Alberts had a throat B flat mechanism added to them, plus I recall a strange shaped barrel (years before this became trendy) but the instruments were Albert Boehm. Going through the back issues of the Clarinet could confirm this, but I've only got that era on PDF format, and searching through for things is annoying and laborious (much easier with a REAL magazine in your hands!)
dn
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-06-21 00:05
Sorry! I misread and mixed up my Tonys. Maybe the Dolnet clarinets are also worth looking into.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-06-25 02:16
I first played on Alan Hacker’s cocuswood E.J.Alberts (Boehm system) when he sold them to me around 1971. Alan had another blackwood pair that had been bassetised by Ted Planas, and he then played the entire repertoire for some time on that pair of basset clarinets – including pieces written specially for them by Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle in their group, The Pierrot Players. His initial motivation was, of course, the Mozart repertoire.
I played on the cocuswood Alberts for some time, in the RPO and the Sinfonietta as well as the Nash Ensemble, and then found a blackwood pair of Alberts for myself that I preferred. That went on for a bit, and then I switched to R13s. As I recall, that was because I felt I wanted an instrument that I could easily replace in an emergency, rather than a dissatisfaction with the Alberts.
I thought the EJs were lovely. In some ways, I wish I’d stayed with them.
Tony
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Author: donald
Date: 2019-06-25 06:01
I played Alan Hacker's instruments only briefly, but also played Linoi to him in lesson and masterclass... I performed it soon after, and at his suggestion we shared the piece - I played the notes in the clarinet range, but he took over in spots where there were basset notes. This was very rewarding, and quite effective - with the unexpected bonus that I had more energy to commit to certain extremes, knowing that I'd then get "time off" when the basset moments came...
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Author: ruben
Date: 2019-06-26 15:17
The moral of the story is that perhaps we should hang on to our instruments. I'll give all of mine away when the days comes when I stop playing.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2019-06-26 18:47
"You must not seek to add to what you have, what you once had…. No one can have it all; that is forbidden. You must learn to choose between.
"One happy thing is every happy thing. Two is as they'd never been."
(The Soldier's Tale)
Not quite apposite to the case of changing instruments; but there's some truth in it.
Tony
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